Google map is a brilliant resource for anyone interested wishing to find a location, or using it to get travel directions. It is also allows anyone who has a website to add a map to their site, free, gratis, without cost, complements of Google and that is really cool.
Now if you are a professional webmaster you may as well move onto another topic as "I will be telling my granny how to suck eggs" so to speak, and if you are not from Scotland, or over the age of 50 you probably need to try and figure out my favourite saying when it comes to explaining how to do things, I always think that other people probably know a lot more than I do, still I may as well amuse myself and explain a little about Google Maps and give those of you who are new at this game a little help setting up a Google Map on your own website. First you may want to have a look at a Google map that you will build with my "keep it simple" user guide to Google Maps.
If you would like to learn how to add a Google Map to your website read more.
I downloaded the Google Earth version 4 Pro version and was amazed at the product. Having played around with Google Maps and used them on my website for a while I had not realised how useful Google Earth could be, especially if you have a travel related website, or any website that requires geographical based information - the range of applications you can use it for is limited only by your imagination.
If you have not downloaded software then you can find the download page here, there is a free version to start with. Anyway in the process of looking at this I discovered that with the Pro version (costs $400 a year) and I believe this allows you to add photo imagery from Google Earth to your website. There is also a free version and a home user version costing $20 a year. Pretty cool when you consider the millions of dollars spend by Google to provide this technology in a fun and easy way. Below are a couple of images saved from Google Earth.
Google Earth 4 view of the Grand Canyon
Toyko Japan, view in Google Earth 4 Some of the picture guides on Google Earth come from the Panoramio.com website. On this site you can sign up for 2GB of webspace to upload your photographs and give them geographical map tags on Google map. You can do many more things on this site and everyone can join. It is a family friendly sites so you can encourage your kids to use this site. Below are a few other links to sites on this or similar topics.
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/